Ecstasy, or extasis, is the Greek term for trance, and is linked with a pleasurable, God-given state of out-of-body experience recorded throughout the New Testament and the church age. Starting with the apostles ecstatic experiences on Pentecost, the Book of Acts further records trances in the lives of Peter and Paul. From the early church to... more...

This book chronicles the live of a Peace Corps volunteer in Libya in the late 1960s, including the first American account of living through the revolution that brought Gaddafi to power. The author moves from campus protests at the University of Washington in the spring of 1968, to Peace Corps training in Utah and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, to... more...

This book focuses on the gender roles within the Unification Church, and on particularly the gender roles as expressed through the vows of marriage. It examines the more widely shared patriarchal assumptions about women in a circumscribed socio-religious environment, with the Church’s gender role system being investigated largely on the level of its... more...

In 1805, at the height of the period of early religious excitement in Kentucky, three members of the Shaker community in New Lebanon, New York, came to the Commonwealth of Kentucky to recruit converts. Soon there were little communities of Believers at Pleasant Hill in Mercer County and at South Union in Logan County. These settlements survived into... more...

Among America's more interesting new religious movements, the Shakers and
the Mormons came to be thought of as separate and distinct from mainstream
Protestantism. Using archives and historical materials from the 19th century,
Stephen C. Taysom shows how these groups actively maintained boundaries and... more...

With more than 1,500,000 members and adherents in 109 countries, there is hardly anyone nowadays who is not familiar with the Salvation Army. And while many have been directly affected by its activities in health, relief, and community service, it is rare that one knows much about this unique Christian movement, which was founded in London in 1865... more...